Dragon 338: Returning to Athas, part1

[Silverblade The Ench]

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Returning to Athas, Part 1)

just up!

sorry its subscriber only so I can't post it all here for you :/

talks about how they thought about 4th ed Athas in development, what to leave in and out.
good stuff

I like this when talking about how/what races the setting has, as they want 4th ed players to have the core races of 4th and nto feel Dark sun is "exclusionary"...instead, Dark Sun is "different":

the eladrin in Dark Sun aren’t your erudite masters of arcane magic that retreat into palatial estates in another realm. Nothing comes through into Dark Sun without being twisted by the setting’s premises.

hehe
so far, they have added races in etc is cool. wonder if eladrin are plane hopping thieves or terrorists, hm? (if there is a feywild, which I think the designers said there is, maybe they are out for revenge for it being damaged, or to defend it?)

also glad they kept to the original Dark Sun boxed set, as the article explains why etc.
yeah, the revised stuff/Prism Pentad had made it NOT feel like Athas anymore!

 

[vagabundo]

Nice Article.

+1 to Dark Sun Hype

 

[the Jester]

wonder if eladrin are plane hopping thieves or terrorists, hm? (if there is a feywild, which I think the designers said there is, maybe they are out for revenge for it being damaged, or to defend it?)

Here's what the background info in the Dark Sun adventure for Encounters has to say about eladrin:

The secretive eladrin live in the few wild places still touched by what they call teh Lands within the Wind (the Feywild), and are a near-mythical race to most.

Not much, but it's what we've got so far.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I'm nervous about those race comments. I would've included Athas is isolated as one of the big bold sentences they talked about during the opening. Which means: planehopping is bad for the feel of the setting, mmmkay? Which means, I am a little concerned about the "Lands Within The Wind" and blink elves.

But it might not be much of a damaging effect. If there's a sentence about how eladrin or tieflings or gnomes or whatever might fit into the setting, and then they're mostly ignored, I've got no major problems with it.

I think it's awesome that eladrin, dragonborn, dwarves, halflings, etc., don't make much of an appearance in the example characters so far. Elves, OK. Muls, Thri-Kreen, Half-Giants, yes (I've got some qualms about re-purposing stats for new races, but eh...not big ones. ). Humans, of course. Standard Tolkeinesque Fantasy Race #459, no.

 

[TarionzCousin]

It's going to be okay: Halflings are still cannibals.

 

[Obryn]

It's pretty much what I wanted and expected, regarding the races. What's important isn't limiting PC races to stuff that existed in 2nd edition. It's dark-sun-ifying those new races, and making them appropriately fit the world.

I also expected the soft-handed approach to the rest.

All in all, I am flush with the success of my guesses.

-O

 

[I'm A Banana]

On the other thing, I'm kind of psyched about the thri-kreen possibilities. I really want to play my four-sword-wielding whirling dervish of destruction that I envisioned way back in 2e, but couldn't do. I'm hoping adding the Wahoo will make my General Grievous dreams a spinning, decapitating, slashing reality!

 

[Wraith Form]

I was surprisingly satisfied how they brought dragonborn in--I'd forgotten that there were "dragonborn" (of a sort) in the setting as far back as 2nd edition!

 

[RodneyThompson]

I'm nervous about those race comments. I would've included Athas is isolated as one of the big bold sentences they talked about during the opening. Which means: planehopping is bad for the feel of the setting, mmmkay? Which means, I am a little concerned about the "Lands Within The Wind" and blink elves.

Except the whole "planar isolation of Athas" is hugely overblown, especially in the context of the original setting. The first boxed set references summoning creatures from the outer planes, and there are references throughout the supplemental books referring to githyanki, the Astral Plane/Ethereal Plane, the Inner Planes, etc. Instead, the philosophy (though not made into one of our core conceits, because it doesn't really describe the world itself much) is "the focus of Dark Sun should be on Athas." Athas is cool enough on its own to not need a bunch of planar stuff to make it interesting, so we tried to just let Athas be Athas. That doesn't mean that there is a complete lack of planar reference, but on the whole I'd say it's on about the same scale as the original boxed set, maybe slightly more but not even remotely as much as some of the later Dark Sun supplements.

All that said, I think we've done some interesting things with the planes, and eladrin, that make them make sense in the context of the setting, and not take any of the focus off of Athas itself.

...and as soon as I post that, I see Rich blogged about eladrin of Athas.

So, here you go. Rich leaves out a few of the details (for example, in the DSCS we say something along the lines that the amount of Feywild left in existence could fit inside the walls of Tyr) and it's only one part of what we did with cosmology.

 

[Wraith Form]

Thanks, Rodney!

That info (and link) helps!

Feel like spoiling any tiefling info?